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Pastimes : Computer Learning -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Esteban who wrote (34330)	5/14/2003 5:37:51 PM
From: jrhana	Respond to of 110653

esteban thank you very much You have given me a lot to think about I am convinced aggressive action is necessary the first time i ran ad aware they found over 1400 strange objects floating around my computer I even had alien screens coming up when I signed on Ad Aware (recommended here) has done wonders The question I asked was about a close friend's computer; they just started DSl and I see wierd things happening. we will protect it and clean it now.

To: Esteban who wrote (34330)	5/21/2003 9:28:34 PM
From: mr.mark	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 110653

Esteban i wanted to commend you on a well thought-out post about computer security. when you state that, "this whole pc security issue is somewhat subjective and there are no firm answers as to what measures are required and which are optional", i give you a double A+ for accuracy. you elaborated with, "Kind of similar to home security, where the mindset of the owner and value of the contents allow for a large range of differing measures taken." to that i would like to append one thought. beyond mindset of the owner, there is degree of specialized education. carrying on with the same metaphor of home security, the owner may be very cautious and may have valuable contents to protect, but if he or she fails to check with the police department for crime statistics in the neighborhood (and in doing so learns that residential burglaries are increasing ten-fold), then a very big piece of the picture has been overlooked. a comprehensive pc security plan is something that requires more than a passing interest or casual effort. perhaps a user doesn't have the time to devote to informing himself. that's understandable. maybe he thinks what he doesn't know won't hurt him. i can say for sure he would be wrong about that! <g3> really what i am saying is that the risk involved in under-securing one's computer isn't often known. so factors reach beyond mindset (degree of paranoia?) and content value. if a user isn't sufficiently apprised of the nasties out there trying to worm their way onto our computers, then the choices he is making really are not that great. "I don't know if Trojan horses should be treated separately from viruses by yet another pc security program, or if anti-virus software sufficiently reduces these threats." i bet you that even AV vendors would tell you that their products do not cover the full range of lions and tigers and bears... viruses and trojans and worms. a good anti-trojan scanner (like TrojanHunter) that digs into (scans) memory processes, the registry, files and ports, using rulesets and signature files in addition to advanced heuristics for polymorphic variants, is invaluable, and a very necessary back up support layer for any AV tool. even flat out redundancy in coverage is okay when one takes into account that so many nasties are now being written to shut down antivirus software. "Maybe others will chime in on the topic, or can post links to articles explaining the whole issue more accurately and in more detail." all chimed in, mark